Thursday, January 20, 2005

Oasis has decided not to put out a double album, and their reason is very overt: They want to stick it to Sony. Here's the story from nme.com (where else?):

Noel Gallagher has said Oasis planned to release a double album – but they decided against it to piss off their record company.

The album, which is rumoured to have a working title of ’Don’t Believe The Truth’, is now nearing completion and is set for release in mid-May.

Speaking in the current issue of Nuts magazine, Gallagher said they had "66 songs" for the record, but have decided on 11 or twelve.
He said: "The album’s finished. We recorded it three times. It’s been a major pain in the arse but it’s come out really good. We’ve written 66 songs between the four of us and I think there’s 11 or 12 on the album. We were going to do a double album, but we don’t want to give Sony too much ‘cos it’s our last one, so fuck 'em."
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This is Overt because there is no risk at all in putting out a single album or pissing off the record company they are leaving. If you want to piss off a major label, do it like the Hampton Grease Band. Unlike Oasis, no one had heard of them, so upsetting their record company actually had some consequences. Oasis's stance is a lot like Pearl Jam's decision not to make videos. They had already sold millions of records with the help of the "Jeremy" video, so it was a pretty empty gesture to turn their backs on MTV.

But back to Oasis: It seems like bands at the stage Oasis is in always have tons of songs to record, but few of them are very good. It seems like the quality of an album is inversely proportional to the number of songs that are written for it. (This goes for non-Advanced musicians, of course.) I wonder if the real reason that they are releasing a single album and not a double is that they are aware that most of the songs aren't very good. But then that would suggest a level of self-awareness that Oasis rarely displays (until it's too late). By the way, I love "Champagne Supernova."